A honey butter chicken biscuit sandwich served during breakfast hours. The return of Wendy’s to Europe within 18-months. 50-piece orders of spicy chicken nuggets being ordered by those that saw a bullish Chance the Rapper tweet about them. The Baconator ordered on the Wendy’s app and delivered soon thereafter by Grubhub. Clearly, this is not the steady as she goes Wendy’s that Wall Street has come to know and appreciate over the past 10 years. No, this is a Wendy’s hungry for more frequent customers during the week. A Wendy’s that believes it deserves a place in breakfast besides heavyweights McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. A Wendy’s that appreciates its model of consistency honed through the years, but is locked and loaded on finally taking some well-calculated risks.

In short, the mild-mannered and all around nice guy Todd Penegor — aka Wendy’s CEO — is ready to write his own chapter in a fast-food chain founded in 1969 by Dave Thomas and known mostly for its fresh beef promise, spicy fried chicken and mostly U.S.-centric store base. “This is a different Wendy’s. You think about having the courage to play to win, we are really trying to create a compelling accelerated growth story and then carry that into our brand and our stock,” Penegor tells Yahoo Finance. Wall Street hit Wendy’s stock hard in September (-9.2%) amid the emergence of Penegor’s more aggressive growth strategies, notably the re-launch of breakfast. The stock has stabilized a bit, rising about 4% in October. The main concern among analysts — generally taken by surprise by the shift in Wendy’s growing plate of initiatives — is that the company is sacrificing near-term profits in another breakfast launch that may not work well due to serious entrenched competition. Penegor says it’s time for Wendy’s to take some well thought out risks now that a good number of restaurants have been remodeled and customers are visiting more often. Yahoo Finance caught up with Penegor fresh off his presentation — and those from his executive team — to analysts and investors at the company’s investor day Friday. The company released bullish third quarter preliminary North American same-restaurant sales growth of 4.4% and a 20% dividend increase. The sales momentum in the business suggests Penegor is right that the time is now for Wendy’s to get after it, so to speak. – Source: Yahoo Finance.